[News] We can bomb the bejesus out of them all over North Vietnam
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Dec 23 14:15:56 EST 2008
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/index.htm
"We can bomb the bejesus out of them all over North Vietnam."
Archive Publishes Treasure Trove of Kissinger Telephone Conversations
Comprehensive Collection of Kissinger "Telcons"
Provides Inside View of Government Decision-Making;
Reveals Candid talks with Presidents, Foreign
Leaders, Journalists, and Power-brokers during Nixon-Ford Years
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 263
Edited by William Burr
Posted - December 23, 2008
<http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/collections/content/KA/intro.jsp>Kissinger
Telephone Conversations: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977
<http://www.proquest.com/products_pq/descriptions/dnsa.shtml>Digital
National Security Archive (ProQuest)
Related postings
<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB135/index.htm>The
Kissinger State Department Telcons
Telcons Show Kissinger Opposed Human Rights Diplomacy;
Secretary of State Tapped Own Phone Calls
<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB123/index.htm>The
Kissinger Telcons
Archive Celebrates Release of Previously Sequestered Telephone Records
Washington, D.C., December 23, 2008 - Amidst a
massive bombing campaign over North Vietnam,
Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon candidly shared
their evident satisfaction at the shock
treatment of American B 52s, according to a
declassified transcript of their telephone
conversation published for the first time today
by the National Security Archive. They dropped a
million pounds of bombs, Kissinger briefed
Nixon. A million pounds of bombs, Nixon
exclaimed. Goddamn, that must have been a good
strike. The conversation, secretly recorded by
both Kissinger and Nixon without the others
knowledge, reveals that the President and his
national security advisor shared a belief in 1972
that the war could still be won. That shock
treatment [is] cracking them, Nixon declared. I
tell you the thing to do is pour it in there
every place we can
just bomb the hell out of
them. Kissinger optimistically predicted that,
if the South Vietnamese government didnt
collapse, the U.S. would eventually prevail: I
mean if as a country we keep our nerves, we are going to make it.
<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19720415-1130-Nixon.pdf>The
transcript of the April 15, 1972, phone
conversation is one of over 15,500 documents in a
unique, comprehensively-indexed set of the
telephone conversations (telcons) of Henry A.
Kissingerperhaps the most famous and
controversial U.S. official of the second half of
the 20th century. Unbeknownst to the rest of the
U.S. government, Kissinger secretly taped his
incoming and outgoing phone conversations and had
his secretary transcribe them. After destroying
the tapes, Kissinger took the transcripts with
him when he left office in January 1977, claiming
they were private papers. In 2001, the National
Security Archive initiated legal proceedings to
force the government to recover the telcons, and
used the freedom of information act to obtain the
declassification of most of them. After a three
year project to catalogue and index the
transcripts, which total over 30,000 pages, this
on-line collection was published by the
<http://www.proquest.com/products_pq/descriptions/dnsa.shtml>Digital
National Security Archive (ProQuest) this week.
Kissinger never intended these papers to be made
public, according to William Burr, senior analyst
at the National Security Archive, who edited the
collection,
<http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/collections/content/KA/intro.jsp>Kissinger
Telephone Conversations: A Verbatim Record of
U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977. Kissingers
conversations with the most influential
personalities of the world rank right up there
with the Nixon tapes as the most candid,
revealing and valuable trove of records on the
exercise of executive power in Washington, Burr
stated. For reporters, scholars, and students,
Burr noted, Kissinger created a gift to history
that will be a tremendous primary source for
generations to come. He called on the State
Department to declassify over 800 additional
telcons that it continues to withhold on the grounds of executive privilege.
The documents shed light on every aspect of
Nixon-Ford diplomacy, including U.S.-Soviet
détente, the wars in Southeast Asia, the 1969
Biafra crisis, the 1971 South Asian crisis, the
October 1973 Middle East War, and the 1974 Cyprus
Crisis, among many other developments.
Kissingers dozens of interlocutors include
political and policy figures, such as Presidents
Nixon and Ford, Secretary of State William
Rogers, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Robert S.
McNamara, and Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin;
journalists and publishers, such as Ted Koppel,
James Reston, and Katherine Graham; and such show
business friends as Frank Sinatra. Besides the
telcons, the
<http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/collections/content/KA/intro.jsp>Kissinger
Telephone Conversations: A Verbatim Record of
U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977 includes audio tape of
Kissingers telephone conversations with Richard
Nixon that were recorded automatically by the
secret White House taping system, some of which
Kissingers aides were unable to transcribe.
A series of unforgettable moments are captured in
the transcripts, not least involving Kissingers
complex and difficult relationship with Richard
Nixon. Repeatedly, the national security adviser
used his skills in flattery and connivance to
help build up the presidents image and stay in
his good graces. During the Jordan crisis in
September 1970, Kissinger told the media that he
had awakened the President to brief him on King
Husseins military actions against Palestinian
guerillas. But a
<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19700917-0900-Nixon.pdf>transcript
of his call to the President the next day
recorded him as informing Nixon: in light of the
fact that there was nothing you could do, we
thought it best not to waken you.
The telcons also illustrate other Kissingers
efforts to spin the media, monitor and control
the process of decision-making, disparage rivals,
keep important associates, such as his patron
Nelson Rockefeller, in the loop, and win over critics:
After Gerald Ford shuffled his cabinet in
November 1975, removing Kissinger as national
security adviser and shifting Donald Rumsfeld
from his chief-of-staff position to be Secretary
of Defense,
<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19751103-simon.pdf>Kissinger
spoke to Secretary of the Treasury William
Simon. The guy who cut me up inside this
building isnt going to cut me up any less in Defense, he noted.
In an
<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19740813-richardson.pdf>August
13, 1974, conversation with Elliott Richardson
after Nixon resigned, Kissinger disparaged George
H.W. Bush as a candidate to replace Gerald Ford
as Vice President. I am not as high on George
Bush, as some others are, partly because of his lack of experience.
In a
<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19730601-nixon.pdf>conversation
with President Nixon on the illegal wiretap
scandal in June 1973, Nixon threatened to go to
political war with Democrats if they pressed the
issue. Lets get away from the bullshit, Nixon
stated angrily. Bobby Kennedy was the greatest
tapper. The President even suspected his own
phone had been wiretapped in the early 1960s.
[J.Edgar Hoover] said Bobby Kennedy had [the
FBI] tapping everybody. I think that even Im on
that list, President Nixon told Kissinger. When
Nixon noted that the wiretap scandal would catch
some of your friends, Kissinger responded:
Well, I wouldnt be a bit unhappy.
In a
<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19710423-1950-Ginsberg-FIX.pdf>bizarre
conversation with anti-war activist/poet Alan
Ginsburg on April 23, 1971, Kissinger discussed
meeting with ardent opponents of the Nixon
administration. Ginsburg suggested the meeting,
joking that It would be even more useful if we
could do it naked on television. I gather you
dont know how to get out of the war, Ginsburg
is recorded as stating. I thought we did,
Kissinger responded, but we are always interested in hearing other views.
In the
<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19720415-1130-Nixon.pdf>April
15, 1972, conversation about bombing North
Vietnam, Nixon recalled that bombing had failed
to defeat Ho Chi Mhins forces in the past.
Nixon: Of course, you want to remember that
Johnson bombed them for years and it didnt do any good.
Kissinger: But Mr. President, Johnson never had a
strategy; he was sort of picking away at them. He
would go in with 50 planes; 20 planes; I bet you
we will have had more planes over there in one day than Johnson had in a month.
Nixon: Really?
Kissinger: Yeah.
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
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